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Tag: national id

I hope I’m wrong to see it as racism returning to the mainstream. Indeed, I hope that the long, agonizingly slow erosion of racial fixations from our society will continue. But I found it interesting to see a Washington Post blog post explaining a recently minted epithet—“cuckservative”—chiefly with reference to the president of a “white nationalist” organization.

Apparently, we have such things in the United States, credible enough to get online ink from a major newspaper. I’m not against reporter Dave Weigel’s use of the source. I take it as confirmation that some of our ugliest politicians have even uglier supporters.

I don’t think it’s likely, but one can imagine a situation where these currents join a worsening economic situation to sow public distemper that gives actual political power to racists. Were some growing minority of political leaders to gain by advocating for ethnic or racial policies, do not count on the “good ones” standing against them. Public choice economics teaches that politicians will prioritize election over justice, morality, or any other high-minded concept.

If the future sees no U.S. national ID materialize, and no political currents to exploit such a system for base injustice and tragedy, some may credit the favorable winds of history. Others may credit the Cato Institute and its fans. We’re working to prevent power from accumulating where it can be used for evil.

Twelve states, as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, currently grant (or will soon grant) drivers’ licenses to unauthorized immigrants. An additional two—Arizona and Nebraska—explicitly grant licenses to immigrants brought to the United States as small children (“Dreamers”). This is a favorable trend, both for public safety and for liberty.

If you want an illustration of the public safety benefits from using drivers’ licenses solely for driving administration, give a read to this Voice of America article which illustrates clearly that illegal immigrants drive even when licensing is unavailable to them. Now that licensing is available, a California applicant who is not legally in this country must first prove residence. “He must also take an eye test to show he can see well, and a written test on driving rules. He must also take a driving test to show he can operate a motor vehicle.” Bringing all drivers up to such minimum standards undoubtedly improves safety outcomes.

For liberty, though, the shift back toward using driver licensing for driving is especially welcome. In 2005, amid a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment stoked by terror fears, Congress passed the REAL ID Act, which requires states to get proof of legal presence if their licenses and IDs are to be accepted by federal agencies. It appeared for a time as though states kowtowing to the federal government would help turn their driver’s licenses into an all-purpose federal tracking and control instrument, a national ID.

It has become increasingly clear that the Department of Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration will never follow through on the feds’ threat to turn away air travelers from states that don’t comply with REAL ID (though many are still taken in by DHS talking points). Some states are declining to implement REAL ID at all. Others are producing easy-to-acquire licenses that are labeled “not for federal purposes,” which REAL ID permits.

The states giving licenses to unauthorized immigrants today run the gamut from “liberal” to “conservative”: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware (effective December 2015), Hawaii (effective January 2016), Illinois, Maryland, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Vermont, and Washington. For varying reasons—and with varying levels of controversy—they’re re-asserting state authority over a state prerogative: driver licensing policy.

That’s good federalism. It’s good for road safety. And it’s especially good for keeping motor vehicle bureaucrats from being TSA agents and vice versa.

I really like Sandusky Register reporter Tom Jackson’s piece responding to my post yesterday about congressional appropriators and our national ID law, the REAL ID Act. Jackson is paying attention to all that is said about Ohio’s congressional delegation. Not just following the herd, he’s looking out for new and different things that might be interesting to the folks back home.

The gist of his argument is that calling Ohio Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur 75 percent supportive of REAL ID is unfair because she voted against it when it passed the House as a stand-alone bill in 2005. She did vote against it that once, but she also allowed a voice vote on the rule that attached REAL ID to a later appropriations bill, and she voted for that bill and the conference report, both votes helping to make REAL ID a federal law.

Rep. Kaptur doesn’t stand out as a pro-national-ID legislator—true—but that is precisely how log-rolling in Washington works. Bills that tie controversial matter like a national ID law to broadly supported priorities like military funding and money for tsunami relief allow representatives like Kaptur to vote for a national ID twice without standing out.

I didn’t do a good enough job of explaining the procedure by which REAL ID was passed, and Jackson understood me to be blaming Kaptur for funding REAL ID. In fact, my post focused on votes for passage of REAL ID itself. But Kaptur and other appropriators will be voting soon on the FY 2016 Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill, which year after year provides funds to push state implementation of REAL ID. The bill has lots of other priorities in it, but Rep. Kaptur and her colleagues on the Appropriations Committee’s Homeland Security Subcommittee are responsible for all of the bill’s content. Given that any of them could de-fund REAL ID and the national ID project with a simple amendment, I believe it’s appropriate to hold all of them to account for not doing so.

Every year around this time, a ritual is underway that quietly moves the ball forward on creating a U.S. national ID. That ritual is the annual appropriations process in Congress, which doles out money for everything the government does—including weaving together a system that may one day identify, track, and control each one of us.

As I noted last year in my policy analysis, REAL ID: A State-by-State Update, DHS has spent over a quarter billion dollars on REAL ID since the 2008 fiscal year. Beginning in 2012, grants supporting state efforts to implement REAL ID were moved into the State Homeland Security Grant Program, which fairly well keeps the amounts hidden from you and me. But appropriators at any time could deny the expenditure of funds to implement REAL ID.

Why don’t they do it? Judging by their records, appropriators are a strongly pro-national-ID group. Appropriations committee members who were in Congress when it passed tended to favor the national ID law—Republicans almost without exception. (And because Republicans chair the appropriations committees in both the House and Senate, they are currently the ones to watch.)

House members serving in 2005 had four chances to vote against the national ID law, and senators had two: First, when REAL ID passed the House on a test vote as H.R. 418. Second, when the rule governing debate in the House on H.R. 1268 passed by voice vote, attaching REAL ID to this spending bill. Third, when H.R. 1268 passed the House and Senate. And, fourth, when the conference report on H.R. 1268 passed the House and Senate.

Nearly twenty years ago, John J. Miller of the Center for Equal Opportunity and Stephen Moore, then the director of fiscal policy studies at the Cato Institute, published a study responding to the rising demand for immigration law enforcement.

Are journalists across the nation working to establish a national ID in the United States? Most would object, “Certainly not!”

But in reporting uncritically on the Department of Homeland Security’s claimed deadlines for implementing the U.S. national ID law, many journalists are unwittingly helping impose a system that the federal government may one day use to identify, track, and control every American. Today I’ve started Tweeting about news articles in which this occurs with the hashtag #TakenInByDHS.

Under the terms of the REAL ID Act, which became law more than ten years ago, states were supposed to begin issuing licenses according to federal standards by May of 2008. States that didn’t follow federal mandates would see their residents turned away at airports when the Transportation Security Administration declined their drivers’ licenses and ID cards.

The DHS failed to issue implementing regulations timely, and backed off of the statutory deadline by regulatory fiat. No state was in compliance with REAL ID on deadline, and no state is compliant with REAL ID today. Over the years, the Department of Homeland Security has declared a variety of milestones and deadlines in a fairly impotent effort to bring state driver licensing policy under federal control. Many states have resisted.

The reason for DHS’s impotence is that making good on the threat to prevent Americans from traveling would almost surely backfire. If already unpopular TSA agents began refusing Americans their right to travel, it would be federal bureaucrats and members of Congress getting the blame—not state legislators.

But most state legislators haven’t done this calculation. They are reluctant to create a national ID, and they don’t want to expend taxpayer funds on a program that undercuts their constituents’ privacy. But told of their potential responsibility for bedlam at local airports, they will accede to such things.

Each year, the homeland security appropriations bill provides for funding that supports REAL ID, the national ID law that Congress passed in haste in 2005.

States across the country originally refused to implement the national ID law, but as we showed in the recently released report, “REAL ID: A State-by-State Update,” some states are reversing course and beginning to implement, and in other states bureaucrats are moving forward with REAL ID contrary to state policy.

Part of the reason this continues is because the federal government continues to funnel money into REAL ID compliance. Year over year, federal grant money keeps state bureaucrats and state bureaucrat interest groups like the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators sniffing around for grant dollars and contracts.

Interestingly, four members of the Senate appropriations subcommittee that funds REAL ID through the Department of Homeland Security are from states that have rejected REAL ID. Senators Patty Murray (D-WA), Jon Tester (D-MT), Mark Begich (D-AK), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) could move to cut off funding for REAL ID if they chose, but, to my knowledge, have not done so in the past.

Senators Tester and Begich are cosponsors of a bill by Senator John Walsh (D-MT) to repeal REAL ID, and Senator Tester came to Cato in 2008 to call out REAL ID’s demerits (his presentation starts at 21:00 in the mp3).

If the senators from anti-REAL-ID states could tap one more member of the homeland security appropriations subcommittee, they would have a majority to amend the bill to withdraw funds from the national ID project. Will they stand by and let REAL ID funding go through again this year?